Friday, February 10, 2012

EtsyMetal Charm Swap progress

Being a member of the EtsyMetal team certainly comes with lots of perks. Being able to talk to other artists who work with metal on a daily basis has given my creative side a real boost. Learning from the other members never stops. You can pretty much count on finding an answer about a technique or process from one or many of the members. I am really lucky to be a part of such an amazing and creative group.

One other perk is getting to participate in the EtsyMetal challenges and swaps. Over the last few months I have been co-curating the EtsyMetal Charm Swap 9. I write a nearly weekly blog update with progress photos from the swap participants. It has been really awesome watching everyone's work come to life.

Finally today, after catching up with my Valentine's orders that stacked up at the beginning of this week I was able to sit down and get to work on my own charms. With just about a month and a half left until the due date, I thought it might be a good idea to get to work. I have 22 charms to make. I really don't want to wait until the extreme last minute...

I have been a little bit wishy-washy on my design. Some ideas were way too complicated especially since I would need to do 22 pieces. Some ideas were way too basic. I decided this morning to just get to my bench and start playing around with some basic design elements. I wanted to incorporate torch fired enamels to bring some color to my charms and I opted to use copper as my overall metal due to the sky-rocketing price of silver. However, I did bring a bit of sterling into the design. I love to use casting grain to add details to my work.

Here is what I came up with for my charm prototype:

Basic elements coming together:

Final result:

Back of the charm:

To follow the progress of all of the EtsyMetal Charm Swap Nine participants, be sure to visit the EtsyMetal blog. I post the charm swap progress on Thursdays. To view past progress updates, search "charm swap" without quotes in the blog search box.